In infant school, there was only ever one instant where a teacher threatened to whack a boy with a plimsoll for leaving them lying around.
I would think that was even back then a little over the top, bearing in mind the boy had a disease, which actually killed him when he was sixteen.
This teacher, namely “Miss Parsley,” was sacked, which in itself speaks volumes.
It wasn’t until Junior School that the whole thing for smacking started to happen, but once again, more often than not, in a jokingly fashion.
In my first and third years at “Orchard Junior School,” my teacher, Mr Allen, whacked the back of children’s legs with what he termed as his nice spangy ruler.
As well as this, he also used to smack children in a playful fashion.
I remember once we were playing a spelling game, and if we got the words wron,g we had to stand on our chairs.
If we got the spellings wrong again, we had to stand on the table.
If we got them wrong again, we had our bottoms smacked with a Two-foot wooden ruler.
Another teacher who springs to mind was “Miss Norris”.
Miss Norris was one of these jolly teachers,
ll liked and very popular with teachers and pupils alike. I remember instances of her putting boys over her lap and play spanking them;
Incidentally, it was never done to girls.
One time I remember we were having our lesson in the school hall and for some reason in the corner was a cane that was twelve foot long.
A boy in his infantile curiosity, started to grab hold of the cane and nearly knocked it over.
Miss Norris noticed this act of lack of attention to her lesson and ordered the boy to hand it to her and to come out to the front of the class.
She then asked for two volunteers to join the boy, and a whole load of little hands went up, including yours truly. Bliss, I was picked alongside another boy We were lined up, and it was announced to an overexcitedA
group of 30 children that we would all get three strokes of the cane.
.
There was one more instant where “Miss Norris” playfully spanked me. Our classroom was in the annex, which was a stone’s throw away from the school’s main building.
One morning, Miss Norris had to go out into the main school, thus leaving a group of thirty-nine year olds to their own devices for five or so minutes.
She warned us all before she went that if she so much heard a peep out of us, or anybody called out “Miss Norris is coming”, as she walked up the school pathway that person would have their bottom smacked on her return.
With this warning off she went. Once she had disappeared out of sight,
Of course, the whole classroom runs riot for a few minutes. Somehow or another,I was on lookout and suddenly I saw “Miss Norris” Strolling up the school Path and decided to shout at the top of my voice,
“MISS NORIS IS COMING!!!”.
Our headmaster at Orchard School was called Mr Mc Call.
Now this man was definitely old school if not prehistoric, very respected and gentlemanly, like so many of his generation had fought in World War Two,
(I recall he was an R.A.F. Pilot) And none of the pupils ever dared cross him.
I think that out of all the teachers who used corporal punishment in my school career, he must have been the fairest.
He never use to gloat in the fact that he had the authority to cane, he never bragged about it like other teachers, he was, like I say, just very old-fashioned in his ways, he commanded respect and got it.
Having said this I did see him grab a boy by the ear once and throw him on the floor, which in my book is ever so slightly over the top.
